Sitting of Parliament

The Parliament of Singapore can meet at any time of the year. The date of the meeting or sitting can be specifically named by Parliament upon its adjournment or, if no date is fixed, called by the Speaker.

A notice for each sitting is sent to the Members of Parliament (MPs) who will in turn send in notices of questions that they wish to ask of the Ministers, amendments that they wish to propose to Bills already introduced or issues which they want to discuss at the forthcoming Parliament sitting. The items of business to be considered on the sitting day are printed in an Order Paper.

Parliament sittings usually begin at 1.30pm. The first one and a half hours are allocated for Question Time, where only questions listed on the Order Paper may be dealt with. As Question Time is limited to one and a half hours, outstanding questions at the end of Question Time will be dealt with as questions for written answer or postponed to a later sitting.

After Question Time, Parliament moves on to Ministerial Statements, if any, and this is usually followed by the introduction of Government Bills. In this part of the proceedings, the Ministers in charge of the respective Bills will introduce new Bills to Parliament. Any MP can also introduce a Bill in Parliament known as a Private Member's Bill.

Finally, Parliament will move on to the Orders of the Day and Notices of Motions, where it will review Bills that are set down for Second and Third Readings and debate Motions moved by MPs.